An oxymoron AND ice fishing in the same post! Nobody expected that on this Thursday morning.

For some reason consideration of the feasibility of this idea was keeping me awake last night. Let’s say you and a friend decided to play a joke on some ice fishermen. To pull this off you need a helicopter, a round stone weighing 100 or so pounds, and a friend to help you. Hover 100-200 feet over the frozen lake where everyone is fishing in their little shacks. Once you’re over a spot near the center of the lake but not over any shacks you have the friend drop the rock onto the lake.

Now, what I want to know is this: would the rock temporarily depress the ice in the vicinity of the impact? That effect would cause water to rise through the fishing holes resulting in many fishermen with wet feet. Would the rock simply shatter the ice at the impact site resulting in a giant hole? Maybe it would do nothing but make loud “thunk.”

Now you may begin to understand why this site is called The Science of Apathy. Global warming is not keeping me up at night nor are the Iraq war and threats of war with Iran. I’m tossing and turning trying to figure out what happens if you drop a rock onto a frozen lake with ice fishermen on it.

Just don’t think that I’m ignorant of the world’s real problems or have anything against ice fishermen.